you're taking pictures you can't bear to lose

be the artist to my muse

i think dying is a beautiful thing to do

by your side

You suppose Sukuna is unescapable. What stares agape, rolling out across your body like a rat's tail writhing in a cloth, is something horrid. Magic is a veil of evil and it chases you amongst your own emotions, unravelling the stitches that had closed-up the ghost breaking free from your own heart, birthed by someone that had been killed at your own hands.

It is bright. A feeling that hangs against your tongue like the pointed edge of a pin, pricking you when you lull yourself into this state of complete, utter, meandering. You are drifting out across sea, not in peril and yet something had died within your eyes, bitter and alone against the rumble of something far greater than you. You hate this feeling of guilt — it is fighting to kill you.

Nothing could quite describe it and you imagine if you had to explain the way your body felt burdenless against the silhouette of unimaginable retributions, it would be impossible to even emulate a word. This is how it always is: feelings are like water; you can't contain it and yet it overspills and you'll watch your lungs fill up and splutter out the envy, the sadness, the anger. Is that how it is going? Something pearled against the web of your palms, stretching out like a blanket across you, only to cuddle your hatred close to your own heart, but for what...

Serpentine is the light — makeshift, hollow, twisted. What fills your vision is not brimming with luminous warmth but vicious glares and biting darkness, snapping at the hairs on your skin as your body aches for oblivion all over again. It feels much like you have been falling forever, cold air wrapping around your skin like a winter scarf, eyes searching for relief in the waves of ebony rolling over corpses.

Corpses that rot amongst the flowers poking out behind ivory ribs and beating hearts on the ends of sticks and stalks, and you are in a garden of your own blood, rivets of cerise that pulse amongst overgrown weeds and itchy grass. And you've planted the head of her at the back with the rose bushes and you'll bury her where the flowers grow — and you'll wonder if you water it enough, will you finally love her like she did for you?

Are you dead? No, no. He would never kill you. You can feel the hiss of his arrogance graze your teeth, as if he, himself, is the one strangling you. You are fixed in a motion of existing that drives you back to the veil of dreamy wisps of utopia: the perfect life, the perfect parents, the perfect you. Existence is enduring more than the consequences of living for those who do not; it is more than what you truly thought in the first place. To exist was just waiting for the inevitable. That snatch of death. Dying, especially to a curse, was an ugly fate. Your mother had been buried out there, on that hill, her body shriveling in the absence of love; the more you slowly start to understand. She died in the same way that one would grind a fly to its death when it lands on the window; you kill it because you can, because you want it to die, you no longer want it's existence... or maybe, you never wanted it in the first place. So why should you be born if you could never be free from death?

Maybe, just as the flames of a hot, white, hell violently rip across your spine, you will allow this fate. It is not about what you want — if the crazed mania of tangled sanity, a nest that settled in the wreckage of your childhood, wants out, then so be it. You are more than you, for you carry more than bones and blood, but gods and martyrs instead. You ought to lose this fight, let your soul flicker out as if it was some poor candle fighting the winter winds, and give away to the inevitable.

And then suddenly, your vision fixes itself like a pair of crooked glasses, burning, scorching, the bottom of your brain being the ashes after a fire. You blink, startled, staggering back and looking around.

Sukuna stares back. "You are a human not a worm. And yet you're slippery, gross and stupid."

What is this feeling? And did he just call me a worm?! Desolation rattles in your ribcage, desperate to break free. You cannot bring yourself to meet what hides behind salmon lids, dull eyes shrouded in contemplation and deep thought, like you're drowning in a past memory, something distasteful that hangs on your tongue at all times.

"No response?" He arches an eyebrow, almost interested by how frightening the stoic, stone-faced expression seemed on your features. "You're normally more loose-lipped. Eh, that gives me more room to talk about myself," He folds one of his legs over the other.

You watch the light-coloured kimono crease across the folds, Sukuna's hands tucked into the billowness of the material, a gentle, soothing cream, almost a smiling purity. And then, the black edges that taint what little humanity dwindled inside him.

You are not giving up, per se. But alas, it is overwhelming. You scrunch your nose and squeeze your eyes shut before burying your face in your arms, a bitter, resigned longing haunts your expression.

"I hate you," The words cut against the slippery escape it had from your tongue. They clamber out, like bony fingers prying open the casket in which they had been sealed. It scratches deep inside you, a bubbling agony that froths across your chest. You hate that Sukuna-like expression of godliness, the one which hugs his eyes, as if he determined you so quickly and completely. You had been hollowed out, a complete annihilation of the self, and now what remains is a crisp, thin veil of pity, an obsolete jewel that a swallow would tighten in it's beak.

And now, eyes rich with cardinal, lacking the cathartic grin to bring meaning to it's life, spin like he had figured you out like a puzzle, a weak lock to a bobby pin. Once done, you will be discarded. But not entirely, as if that was bad enough. You'll lose who you are because what's left is just skin and bones, tied together as if you were some Christmas present being left on a doorstep.

Sukuna's eyes observe the changes in your expression, almost feeling your own thoughts. He's an invasion of poison, with rivets of curses crawling into the very veins you'll stare at for too long in the dim, crackling bathroom lights back at Sendai. "You are too naïve to confront what you did, so you fool yourself into thinking it was the work of others."

You stagger forwards and the horrible, guilty anchor of being a human is lodged in your chest and it heavies as you struggle further. And you bite back the torment just enough to see Sukuna at his throne, and how detailed the skulls he sit on actually were.

"Stop lying to me," A barely audible whisper slither out, as if you were on the verge of collapse. You know this feeling wasn't because you were upset, it came from a place buried underneath an untouched horror. You had planted this truth where her grave was, as if digging into the dirt and keep it covered would hide it forever, as if you could forget your own role in this. You, [L/n] [F/n] are not the person you try to be, and you'll never be that person: popular, friendly, loved.

You are addicted to things you can't have and you'll run after the fire that Prometheus shared, even if you will curtail the wrath of some higher deity, even if said god was just a roseate man that was more complex that your own past.

Sukuna's lips twitch like a finger behind a loaded gun, and as if he fires the fatal shot, his tongue moves quicker than his thoughts, viperous. "Should I pity you?"

"If I wanted to be pitied, I would have just gone to therapy," Your remark is childish but expected.

He presses further, ignoring the words of spite. "You are my vessel. It is not those human opinions but it is something written long before you were born, before I was created. Your mother understood this, even her diary showed you the truth but I wonder if you boiled your eyes in water to blind yourself from this. She was a puppet, a means to an end for my return."

Your fingers judder, a rage that was being caged for too long. I will carve out my own path, even if it is a bloodied passage.

Sukuna continues, his tone jovial and almost light-hearted, as if musing on a lunch with a friend, "My essence was scattered by those annoying sorcerers, so this time it would take far more to revive me. I needed a humanly form to control and why hunt when prey is right there? Your people are below us now, brainless and blind. The [L/n] clan crumbled, one by one, when they drank my blood in their cultist rituals to carry my soul like a wretched womb across the years. And each of your sickly bloods and twig bones strengthened me. I am malignant, invasive, cancerous. I was killing you."

Those bloody eyes, violence protruding in the gleam of darkness, look disturbingly pleased. He is happy that he hurts you. He is over-the-fucking-moon.

"It was only a member came that could control and produce Cursed Energy, I would use them," He notices your expression, "Don't be displeased about being a stepping stone. You know very well that being handed the short end of the stick is equity in this bleak, godless world. Brats like you ask to kill, not be killed. You're a sheep hiding amongst wolves, [L/n.]"

Dreams are but dreams, so you know that what you yearn is never anything but an "if". You tremble like an exposed nerve, as if you knew this was your eternity of suffering. Your history is brimming with losses and victims and an characterised unhappiness seen amongst all people: people that are never the hero. The thread of history is spun together at the hand of a spinster; the ridge of her spine is something the world dies climbing, struggling to stay afloat when the weight of humanity burdens all. Your shoulders feels heavy from such poignant loss; it's the anguish of a million souls, people who should have been alive. The cold air that brushes your cheeks tinges them rosy red, as if flecked with blood; it almost reminds you of hollow breaths from ghosts.

"Is this my end?" You hold your head high, "You are ready to ascend?"

Sukuna mistakes the lack of a stutter in your voice as a relucted submission; he grins, "It's just your beginning. This is cyclic and it will never end. And I don't need to ascend," He clenches his fist, sharp claws almost drawing blood, "I am already God, [F/n]. Now, it's your turn."

You anticipated this: the lunge after a predator's stare, the way he watched you like a viper that had readied it's fangs. His Malovent Shrine. His attacks were not just his anymore. You could almost read him now, like opening a book, lips parting and starting to recite.

Sharp blades tinged with red, cut through the air cleanly, but clatter upon hitting your shield. More follow, an odd, unrecognisable pattern. It reminded you of a murder of crows, beady-eyed and addicted to chaos. Sukuna thrives when he is powerful. He feels like he is where he needs to be. How can you take that away from him?

You remember the technique you had explained to Gojo back at home, where you let whatever ebbing, veil of instinct guide, a hand over your own, a Mother's touch. It is hard to calm yourself down like this, to rewind the clock and listen to the beating of your heart and how it pounds against your chest, heaving and threatening to burst.

The shield drops and you push that feeling of utter, complete hatred, a winding and infecting emotion that could snap your own bones, onto the attacks, sending them back. Sukuna narrows his eyes, "You're... hesitating... and yet..."

He stands before you. This place is his playground, after all. He raises his arm but you block it, the weight almost crippling you. More follow in-suit, a litany of blows that hit and then don't, but you can barely get an attack in, let alone allow it to injure him. You highly doubt he can be injured anyway, so you query how this fight can even be won. It seemed absurdly fixed, set in stone. How can you run away from the truth again?

"What are trying to do?" You hiss, "You know I can't fucking kill you."

His eyes carry that same feeling from earlier, a look of satisfaction like you were some riddle to solve. "I am wearing your soul down. Can't you feel it? Once I am certain I can kill you in one blow, I might even do it."

You narrow your eyes, an attack having just narrowly scathed him, "Might?"

"Where is the fun in cutting off your head? I already did it to you once. Why don't I let you kill yourself? You are both the victim and the perpetrator of your own fate."

He steps closer and you scurry, feet tripping as you stumble backwards. Sukuna raises his arm, and almost as if he had spun it out of midair, she appears.

Feverish eyes and a glowing smile and you do wonder how pretty she would be in death. Your face is blank, like a scroll without words, lacking the touch of humanity, more in empty tears. Do you hate her? Hatred is a pretty emotion and you kindle it like a fire within your heart. Staring at her only deludes you into splitting into two, separate from this thin, make-believe of a ghost.

She is tender but dead, unalive in that cruel gaze. Those eyes of hers are widened and frothy with burgundy, peeling back layers of melted chocolate hues to reveal the secrets behind scorching to death.

The image of her before, is what fronts your mind; body twitching on the tree branch, autumnal eyes wide, a lidded, dead expression. It hurts, not just to see her like that, stretched so thin in the palms of mercy, but to know what the pain inflicted felt like. Back then, staring at those uncanny hollow eyes and watching your own sour expression turn so apathetic, something shifted violently within you, like the frozen surface of a lake in spring. That ice seems to burn coldly against your skin from all angles, devouring you whole to blur out the terrible truths. Recalling the events had never felt so blank and unseeing, as if perhaps they had happened but you were not there in the heart of all.

You know that to be false. But maybe it was just how you had been dulled down to think. The trauma traps your nursing, illumined mind in this never ending, tightening spiral — this happened, she is dead. Still, nerved and shaken, you resist, because the truth is so awful that words cannot possibly compose the nature of it, not anyway.

Mother, that is the truth. And yet she stands.

You feel as if you watched it all happen from the sidelines, but you know well that you were there, cold wind whipping against your skin, hair tangled in tree leaves; your body was shivering, shrivelled and shrieking from the horror of what had been done, what had come out of you and her. Mouth wide open but no screams come out — who's going to hear you?

It is now it dawns on you that Sukuna is a part of you, for he can understand the feeling you cannot describe. The feeling of when every time you try to push Mother away, she returns stronger in your head: this idealised image of her that you have is tarnished by the reality that she isn't perfect, that you chase her because you can, not wondering what the consequences truly are because you know can't handle them. For you see, know now, that a heart is a dark, wretched observer. It won't bleed. Maybe the slightest for someone like you (but it won't be enough.) It is not the mother's womb — it can never stretch to make room for you. Sometimes it does feel like that. You cannot be loved by someone who is destined to do so.

And you are falling back into the feelings you had put away, tucked into the drawers and corners of your childhood home, beneath the mattress or behind the potted flowers. You think too deeply about everything. And you can't tell if that allows you to see more of the world, or less of it.

God, this horrible, horrible feeling. This feeling — the one that makes you feel like someone drove a knife through your heart — that feeling. "What did you do?" Oh, your lips quiver, a bow with an arrow that won't fire. Your nails cling, fingers digging into your temple because the more you stare, the more it stares back. The more she looks.

You were aching for stability, for the past to be fixed (as if could be, as if it was ever broken). Broken is just reality.

Broken is just fearing that everyone you know is like them — Sukuna, Mother, Father. Broken is wanting to kill them with your hands, press your thumb against their neck and squeeze the humanity out of them and yourself. Sweet is the desire for revenge; that's what makes it so addictive. Broken is wanting to dive headfirst into the ocean, wanting to feel the sting of cold ice caressing your shoulders as you plunge further into the dark abyss. As if that was better warmth than a hug from your cold, dead corpse of a mother.

Sometimes it felt like something inside you was wrestling to take control. Other times, part of you screamed to be killed, knowing that no god would ever hear your woeful pleas — only shitty Sukuna.

You see, you have always been like this, hm?

That 'want to die'. The bad thoughts. The anger. The madness. And being drunk on the illusion of happiness at ten years old because it is the truth: what you want to go away will never actually disappear. It is a scar that cannot heal, not like this, not when you want to remove the memory of a loved one until they had been winded back out of existence. This is never going to happen, you think as your heart yearns for the stranger in front of you, the soul of your mother, linked by blood and evil.

"[F/n]," She coos — you don't recoil, but you don't embrace it. You're fighting the urge to hug her and it hurts. You vehemently remove the image of her teary-eyed face and warm smile from your head. "Where did the years go? You've grown."

"That's not my mother," But even you aren't convinced. You can feel Sukuna's grimace on you, malice tucked between his teeth like he's preparing to feast on your soul. He'll put you through hell and back. You dislike this idea of being roasted like a marshmallow. It is a very humiliating concept.

"Please don't think you're losing," Mother lifts her arm and her thumb strokes your cheek, palm cupped against your skin, "You have never failed me, [F/n]. Because... I have always loved you."

No, no, no. She is my mother. I am supposed to her and she is supposed to love me. This is how it works. I don't hate her. I am not supposed to hate her.

Your shoulders melt and so does your defensive stance as she pulls you into a hug, "Please come with me. Take away your pain and be the person I taught you to be," She whispers into your ear, a low lullaby-like voice that is akin to an angelic hum.

You feel torn, almost shadowed by the guilt you lug around so much, compelling you to nod. And yet, your voice echoes a quiet, wobbly murmur, "No... I don't want to."

Sukuna's claw digs into your shoulder, "Funny coming from the girl who murdered her own mother at the age of 10. I would have thought you'd want to climb up the ladder with that history."